Now you just need a nice pair of Senheiser HD 800s and you're all set!

Yeah, well, while I do bow to them (tried them couple of times), it breaks my paradigm of middle-class ghettoing together as good sound as I can, so I think I'll have to settle for HD 600's. But you never know, if I get depressed enough in january, I might just buy them!

I have to say though, that the Explorer and flacs sound awesome when played through my Edison 60 that I put together back in the 90's as a form of break-up therapy.

It also has a weird effect of revisiting some stuff I haven't listened to in yeeears, like King Crimson for example!_________________“If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him”

Digital to Analogue Converter.
Say you have a CD, flac, or any other bitstream (even mp3 though it's compressed). Without going into too much detail (mostly because I sort of know how it works), the bitstream is in certain bitrate / sampling frequency and there is a DAC chip somewhere that takes that bitstream and transforms it into an analogue signal that can be amplified and sent to your speakers.

So besides bitrate which is the quantity of the signal, an important part of how it all sounds is HOW it is transformed to analogue signal. So on most soundcards you have a cheapskate chip which is ok for games, or some cheap headphones (you get a lot of booms, and highsssss, and some mid's).
But if you plug that into a decent amplifier and speakers, it sounds compressed, distorted, instruments don't sound like they do, singers feel like singing in a closet somewhere, etc. Feed the digital signal to a higher quality DAC, and it sounds quite good. This thing sounds much better than my old NAD CD player, for example.

So it's a DAC with some audio-grade capacitors and other junk, and its whole purpose is to take over digital signal before the OS sends it to whatever sound card / chip you have in your computer, and converts it in a way that a high(ish)-end CD player would.

So it's a $300 thing that sounds like a much more expensive CD player.

Try it out, go to an audio store, ask to try it out (or some other brand) with a pair of really good headphones, or connected to a good hi-fi in their listening room. Bring your laptop and some FLACs on it, plug it in, and enjoy.

Oh and it's supposed to "just work" with linux, haven't tested it yet, but I will soon._________________“If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him”

If you have a topic 'specifications' that for fucks sake, put them there. And not some marketing blubber.

I don't look at specs, I listen to it. So there's your specifications. All I am saying is that I think it sounds great. I could care less if there were gremlins in it. _________________“If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him”

Now you just need a nice pair of Senheiser HD 800s and you're all set!

Yeah, well, while I do bow to them (tried them couple of times), it breaks my paradigm of middle-class ghettoing together as good sound as I can, so I think I'll have to settle for HD 600's. But you never know, if I get depressed enough in january, I might just buy them!

I have to say though, that the Explorer and flacs sound awesome when played through my Edison 60 that I put together back in the 90's as a form of break-up therapy.

It also has a weird effect of revisiting some stuff I haven't listened to in yeeears, like King Crimson for example!

Don't do it. I blew $800 on a killer set of "deep in-ear" earphones back around 2003, and they sounded so good it was incredible. (The closest thing now made are these Etymotics which are nowhere as good, but you can see the type I'm talking about.)

Then I ruined them by sleeping with them in too many times. What a waste. Ever since the small audio jack, headphones are all pieces of shit. I won't spend more that about $50 on them now._________________Deja Moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before

If I have FLAC, I've already converted using the sound card, so how is that going to demonstrate this thing's superior quality? I think I'm misunderstanding something._________________lolgov. 'cause where we're going, you don't have civil liberties.

Now you just need a nice pair of Senheiser HD 800s and you're all set!

Yeah, well, while I do bow to them (tried them couple of times), it breaks my paradigm of middle-class ghettoing together as good sound as I can, so I think I'll have to settle for HD 600's. But you never know, if I get depressed enough in january, I might just buy them!

I have to say though, that the Explorer and flacs sound awesome when played through my Edison 60 that I put together back in the 90's as a form of break-up therapy.

It also has a weird effect of revisiting some stuff I haven't listened to in yeeears, like King Crimson for example!

Don't do it. I blew $800 on a killer set of "deep in-ear" earphones back around 2003, and they sounded so good it was incredible. (The closest thing now made are these Etymotics which are nowhere as good, but you can see the type I'm talking about.)

Then I ruined them by sleeping with them in too many times. What a waste. Ever since the small audio jack, headphones are all pieces of shit. I won't spend more that about $50 on them now.

Yeah I was reading about er-4p's yesterday. I'll just grab the laptop and the thingy, and try some stuff I find in my comfort zone that gives me the sound that I think its good _________________“If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him”

Now that I think about it and look at the pictures closely, that's what I had (the ER-4). I could have sworn they were like $800, though. Maybe my brain magnified that because I was pissed off that they fell apart on me. I should add that the the company offered to replace them, no questions asked, but I was busy and never sent them back._________________Deja Moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before

Could be back then, who knows. I remember buying Koss PortaPro's around 2002-2003 or so, and the high-end in-canal were just starting to show up in stores, so it could be higher prices for first models. Or maybe I'm just a newb and headphones like that were around even earlier, but I can't remember seeing any. It was either huge fuck-off AKG's and Sennheisers or the crappy earbuds that you got with walkmans.

Hey man, walkmans! I was pro at rewinding/forwarding just enough to the start of the next song without looking. Talk about timing! _________________“If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him”

And of course, at the time I bought them I was living in what amounts to a dorm room.

Haha, Cerwin Vegas! I have a pair I bought when I was studying as well, older I think, got them on flea market. They don't have 2nd mid on top (3-way, horn, mid and woofer) and its 12-inch with no red rubber, but black (and worn).
No model on the back plate, it only says "HED (High Energy Design)", and High/Mid Freq scoops above connectors. They serve as nightstands.

Also they have the fuse that pops out when they are overloaded.

Of course, horn tweeters in a small room, perfect! _________________“If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him”